If you look close, you will see a chair-lift near the top of the picture to the right. This is not the chair lift we took to reach the wall.

This second chair-lift may be used to return to the base of the hill after a lot of climbing from the first lift.

There are three choices for returning to the parking lot. You may walk, take one of two chair-lifts, or ride the toboggan like we did.

If you watched the 2008 Olympics, you may have seen the NBC news-team riding the toboggan (this link will take you on a virtual ride) on
its stainless steel curved track from the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall.

Question:

What kind of culture and mindset would build the Great Wall to keep trouble out?

To find the answer, learn about Confucianism and Taoism, the guiding principals behind China's culture and civilization for twenty-five
hundred years.

China is (or at least was before Western nations arrived) a culture that honored the scholar, the poet and the artist above merchants and generals.